They want no stimulus to throw off this
dreadful yoke; but they do want, not manifestoes, which they have had
even to surfeit, but real protection, force, and succor.
The disputes and questions of men at their ease do not at all affect
their minds, or ever can occupy the minds of men in their situation.
These theories are long since gone by; they have had their day, and have
done their mischief. The question is not between the rabble of systems,
Fayettism, Condorcetism, Monarchism, or Democratism, or Federalism, on
the one side, and the fundamental laws of France on the other,--or
between all these systems amongst themselves. It is a controversy (weak,
indeed, and unequal, on the one part) between the proprietor and the
robber, between the prisoner and the jailer, between the neck and the
guillotine. Four fifths of the French inhabitants would thankfully take
protection from the emperor of Morocco, and would never trouble their
heads about the abstract principles of the power by which they were
snatched from imprisonment, robbery, and murder.
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